MOORE, Okla.—When the tornado-warning sirens blared, Kelly Law was already in the hallway of Plaza Towers Elementary School, huddled against the wall, shielding as many students as she could with her body.

Another eight or 10 teachers did the same, she said. For the long minutes it took the tornado to pass, she shut her eyes and prayed. The roof was ripped away. "It sounded like rivets being pulled out by a monster," Ms. Law said.

The beige, tile-covered wall was the only piece left standing at her end of the school. The twister left the children, ages 4 to 8, caked in mud, with gashes from flying wood and glass. Some cried. Others whimpered.

But they formed a line, Ms. Law said, climbed through the rubble and started walking.

"They were very, very brave," the 57-year-old teacher's assistant said. "They were just marched out of there like we were lining them up in the hallway, like we were going to class."

At least 24 people, including nine children, were killed and more than 230 injured in the twister Monday that tore through Moore and nearby Oklahoma City, a spokeswoman for the state Department of Emergency Management said Tuesday, reducing an earlier estimate of fatalities.

Joshua Hornsby's daughter Ja'Nae was killed in the tornado that struck Moore, Oklahoma. The WSJ's Jason Bellini speaks with the father about the loss of his 9-year-old girl.

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Seven children died at the Plaza Towers school, which was destroyed, Moore Police Sgt. Jeremy Lewis said.

Ja'Nae Hornsby, 9 years old, was one of them, her family said. The girl's father, Joshua, said he had dashed to the school Monday and found "a pile of rubble."

An overnight search yielded nothing. Mr. Hornsby learned Tuesday morning the body of the third-grade girl had been pulled from the wreckage. He believed she was in the school gym when the tornado struck.

"There's no way to explain," Mr. Hornsby said at a local church Tuesday, surrounded by family members who watched cellphone videos of a smiling Ja'Nae, twirling and dancing.

Before the storm hit, the staff at Plaza Towers began mobilizing early on Monday. Some students had already been picked up by parents worried about severe weather.

Ms. Law said she rounded up the special-education students she usually works with and took them to their designated shelter place: a hallway in the part of the school where the lower grades are located.

When she arrived, other children were filing into the hall, she said, "just like our regular tornado drill. I'm sure the kids were thinking that's what it was."

Teachers instructed the students to sit on the floor facing the wall and tuck their heads. Dozens of children lined the hallway wall, Ms. Law said. Some parents who had planned to pick up their children also took cover there. Tornado sirens began sounding, and then it started.

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Emergency workers sifted through rubble at the Plaza Towers school, where seven children died in Monday's tornado. Reuters

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"It seemed like the tornado kept coming," Ms. Law said. "It was like it would never go away."

When the tornado finally passed, Ms. Law found herself in a nearby closet, but the children were still huddled. Some had blood running down their heads but, she said, there wasn't time to check them. There was the smell of leaking gas.

"We need to get out and we need to get out now," a teacher told the children. Ms. Law and other adults helped the children up to begin crossing an obstacle course of glass shards and toppled metal beams.

A nearby classroom had collapsed, leaving a 2½-foot mound of debris that blocked their escape. One by one, the teachers lifted up the students and handed them to a man who showed up to help.

As the survivors congregated in the school parking lot, adults began assessing injuries of the children. Everyone was wet, Ms. Law said, and many had lost their shoes. A little boy who had been hit in the head was shivering, said Ms. Law. An older girl took off her coat and offered it to him.

"It's like you're in a war zone," she said. "You know what happened, and it doesn't seem real."

The Plaza Towers school, which was built in 1966, wasn't required by law to have an underground shelter, the best protection against such a powerful tornado, officials said. Another school in Moore, Briarwood Elementary, was also damaged but reported no fatalities.

Oklahoma state law also doesn't require schools to have fortified aboveground rooms, which can be built with reinforced concrete to withstand tornado winds, said Kevin Kloesel, director of the Oklahoma Climatological Survey, which offers statewide training in emergency management. But tornado-prone stretches of the U.S., which include North Texas and Kansas, should consider requiring the so-called safe rooms at new schools, he said.

Local officials said Tuesday that about 100 schools in the state are equipped with safe rooms that were built with federal funds. The money had dried up in past years, officials said, and many schools were on a waiting list.

Some newer schools in Moore have safe rooms, including Kelly Elementary School, which was rebuilt after it was flattened by a deadly 1999 tornado. That year, the storm hit outside of school hours.

Oklahoma State Superintendent Janet Barresi "is very interested in discussing the need for safe rooms in schools once we get past this disaster," said Sherry Fair, a spokeswoman for the Oklahoma State Department of Education.

At the Plaza Towers school, teachers and students relied on safety drills practiced many times.

Susan Pierce, superintendent for Moore Public Schools, said Tuesday the 23,000-student district carried out its emergency plan, monitoring the weather Monday. "When it was time to shelter, we did just that."

Joann Childers, 42 years old, said she was one of the first to reach Plaza Towers. She had ridden out the twister in the basement of her landlord's office nearby. She emerged minutes later, she said, and saw that the school—and the neighborhood—had been leveled.

"My instincts kicked in," the retired marine said. "I was in Desert Storm and that was a cakewalk compared with" the scene at the elementary school.

By Tuesday afternoon, the rescue had shifted to a cleanup operation. A backhoe pawed at the pile of steel beams, siding, insulation and splintered planks while men worked with blowtorches.

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